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Calnisoles, tap pants, gowns, kunonos, teddæs, French bras, bikinis and more. Only at ... VIStt our boutlqURS at 2245 UnIOn St. San Franci.'>C() {"y ITI Palo Alto. CA .-:Ii W' '* .A. 4ft"" ^ late and so, obviously, had the telex message-but an army of importunate cabbies was more than willing to speed me across the Nile through moonlit Cairo on the forty-five-minute ride to Giza. By midnight, I had collapsed into the oversize bed in my room at the Mena House, a luxurious but slightly seedy remnant of the British raj which was now managed by In- dians. It was seventeen hours since I had left the S.F .M. base camp, just a hundred and ten miles away. I was too tired to take much more than a glance at the Great Pyramid of Cheops along- side the hotel. At least I was in Egypt, and tomorrow things were bound to be better. .-..iIIIIif' " . ..$ T HAT optimistic sentiment, I real- ized the next morning, was a con- tradiction in terms. Things almost nev- er get better in Egypt. My first order of business was to teJephone Dr. Morsi Saad E] Din, the chairman of the State Information Service, and announce my tardy presence, apologize for standing up his driver, and find out what ar- rangements had been made for me to travel across the Suez Canal to Egyp- tian-held Sinai. However, the telephone in my room was stone-dead. I had heard that Cairo suffered from a chronic telephone problem, but I as- sumed that a dead room phone in one of the city's more opulent hotels was ,# not a part of the nuisance. In the .' Byzantine lobby, the desk clerk told me that most of the guests' phones were out of order that morning but that one of the lobby phones seemed to be worlcing. There was a queue of ten people waiting to use that one operable phone-elegant English ladies of a cer- tain age, wealthy Arabs in Bond Street suits, and] apanese and American busi- nessmen. I joined the queue and watched in despair as, one by one, each person ahead of me shouted at the operator, waited several minutes, slammed down the receiver, and walked away muttering to himself. An American standing in line be- hind me said that this lobby scene was " b . h b . USIness-or, rat er, non- USIness-as usual," and went on to tell me, "I'm in heavy machinery and I come here often. The phones almost never work right in this city. Nothing works right. After you're here for a while, you wonder why it took the Israelis six days to win that war." "Well, how does anything ever get done?" I asked him. "It doesn't," he said. At last, my turn came I gave the hotel operator the number of the State Information Service, and she said JUNE 1 8, 1 9 7 9 wearily that she'd try to get through. A few minutes later, she came back on the line to say that she was sorry but all the circuits in downtown Cairo seemed to be out of order. Like the others, I hung up muttering. The American in heavy machinery advised me to try "the Cairo shuffle." He ex- plained that when you want to get in touch with someone and the phones aren't working, you take a taxi to his office or home. Meanwhile, he may be trying to get in touch with you, so he takes a taxi or drives to your hotel or office. "You usually cross paths in some traffic jam, and the whole day is shot," the American said. "Office hours are only from eight till two, with Fridays off. Nothing gets accomplished, except messages are left, and you make an- other stab at meeting the next day. The Cairo shuffle accounts for most of the horrible traffic and air pollution in the CIty, I think." I took his ad vice ( actually, it was the only thing to do) and ventured forth by taxi into the grand pandemo- nium of daytime Cairo. The State In- formation Service was in the heart of the downtown area, on Sharia Talaat Harb, and, inching along the boule- vard leading from Giza to the city, I was immediately struck by the ter- rifying, seemingly hopeless troubles of the place. If every urban affliction on earth-with the possible exception of crime-were raised to the second power, there would be Cairo: poverty (beggars outnumber pedestrians on some sidewalks), congestion (Cairo may be the third most populous city in the world, with more than eight million inhabitants in an area designed for three million; nobody knows for sure, since hordes of uncounted people live in such unlikely shelters as the tombs in the main cemetery), pollu- tion (the varied skyline is bathed in a suffocating combination of dark-gray fumes and umber desert dust, suffused with the sweet putrefaction of the Nile, dung, flowers, and coffee), decay (slum buildings suddenly collapse un- der the weight of old age and neglect), and so on, through each category- bureaucracy, insolvency, traffic, disease, filth, noise. Every obtuse cliché comes to mind with new meaning and in ten- sity-"grinding poverty," "teeming masses," "wretched living conditions." Under ubiquitous billboards, murals, and posters of Sadat (Sadat smiling, stern, thoughtful, fatherly, brotherly, exemplary), crowds of women in black gowns formed outside shops, waiting to buy rumored new supplIes of sugar, flour, and tea, the staples of Egyptian life. My cabdriver pointed at the wom-